This is the way to the stars,' Goldman explained carefully. Doesn't it shine? Doesn't it give you hope? Doesn't it beckon you to ascend? Look around you, Jimmy. It's time to say goodbye. I'm here to help you do that. I'm here to help you. And do you know why, Jimmy?'
Why do you want to help me?'
Because I'm your guardian angel, that's why. I'm here to help you come to Jesus, Jimmy. You're not losing your mind. Not at all. You're expanding it. You're bursting out of your old body and getting ready for a new one. A heavenly body. You're not like these other people any more. You're changing. It's like the moment when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. And if you see things differently, it's because there's already a little piece of heaven burning inside you. Can you feel it? It's calling you, like a little beacon. That's what told me that it was time to come and find you. You see, I'm a kind of conductor, Jimmy. I'm here to conduct you safely up to heaven. You can see that now, can't you? And if you ask me what you must do to get there, I'll show you. But you have to want it, Jimmy. You have to want it real bad. And you have to trust me. You have to give yourself up to it. Jesus doesn't want people who are reluctant to come unto him. He only wants those who want him.'
Goldman shook his head and smiled. It was just like talking to Jimmy Stewart, he thought. He had never quite seen himself in the role of George Bailey's guardian angel, Clarence, but on the whole he thought he was turning in a pretty good performance. Of course the intent was very different. The whole point was to persuade Nimmo that his wonderful life was over, and that another even more wonderful life - the life in the hereafter - was about to begin. That seemed feasible. But it was another movie that came to mind as he persuaded Nimmo to go into the Empire State Building with him, and ride the elevator up to the eighty-sixth-floor observatory: King Kong. Not that he considered planting that image in Nimmo's strongly medicined mind, for a moment. Besides, there was no way to get out on the roof of the enclosed 102nd-floor observatory.
There were only a few people around on the eighty-sixth floor and, surrounded by some of the most remarkable views of the city, none of them paid Goldman and Nimmo any attention. Stretching south toward the Financial Center, Manhattan looked like a giant cemetery. The Flatiron Building on 23rd Street, where Broadway and 5th Avenue crossed, seemed no bigger than a throat lozenge. On the north-eastern side, the Chrysler Building appeared close enough to touch. Bryant Park, in front of the New York Public Library, was as green as an emerald. Goldman drew Nimmo over to the deserted western side of the cold and gusty observatory. No one was much interested in a poor view of the Hudson River, the Long Island Rail Yard, and the rooftop of Macy's at Herald Square.
At the coffee shop in Grand Central Station he had poured a water solution containing eighty micrograms of lysergic acid diethylamide into Nimmo's cup, this being precisely double the dose the CIA chemist at the whorehouse on Horatio Street had recommended as a maximum safe dose. The chemist had seemed more like a beatnik and a pimp than a scientist, with longish hair, a rollneck sweater, suede shoes, and corduroy pants, but then he wasn't supposed to look like Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff.
We're not exactly sure how it works,' the young chemist had explained, handing over the medical samples bag containing the supply of LSD Washington had ordered him to give to Goldman. We think it may deprive the brain of glucose, which might serve to explain why mystics who undertake long fasts are more likely to have hallucinatory experiences. The more LSD you take, the less sugar your head gets, and the more powerful and durable your hallucinations. But whatever the reason for why it works, it is a very powerful drug and needs to be used only very sparingly. A few years back, one of our own physicians, a guy named Frank Olsen, took seventy micrograms of the stuff in a glass of Cointreau - that's almost twice as much as might be considered safe today - and, after eight days of hallucination, threw himself out of a tenth-floor hotel window right here in New York City.'
Really?' Goldman had been impressed. Which hotel?'
The Statler.'
No wonder. The Statler's a lousy hotel. I'd throw myself out of a fucking window if I had to spend eight days there.'
Don't joke about it, man. This stuff is dynamite.'
So it doesn't mix with Cointreau. What else? Does it do what it's supposed to? Control minds?'
It'd make you much more suggestible, in the sense that whoever is there to affect your interpretation of your perceptions, and what you're hallucinating, can make the difference between a good experience and a really bad one. In larger doses, there's a tendency for subjects to become paranoid. That's where LSD becomes really dangerous - not just to the subject, but to the people around the subject. One of the Johns here killed a hooker - stuffed a fucking sheet down her throat - because he thought she was a giant snake trying to swallow him. But, to answer your question more precisely, no, it's not mind control. We had hoped it would turn people into human robots, but it doesn't do that. It fucks you up, is what it does, man. Take enough LSD, it fucks you up for ever.'
Nimmo stared into the unfathomable azure that was the living, breathing sky, into the burning purgatorial fire that was the sun, and saw divine light at its full blaze. Beside heaven, the world seemed a poor thing of grey concrete, precarious to stand on, like a rotten tooth in a whole mouth of dead teeth. And the only way to escape the horrors of hell that lay in the pit far below his enlarged feet - from the fear, and the bewilderment, and the earthbound chaos of the streets -seemed to be to reach out, through the protective fence of heaven, and to embrace it, as Goldman suggested.
I have to go now,' Goldman was saying. Because I have to be out there, on the other side of the fence, to catch you. To bear you up in my hands in case you so much as strike your foot on the stone ledge when you jump. You won't see me. But you'll know I'm there. All you have to do is climb on to the other side of the gates of heaven that you see in front of you now, and then fly to me, like the angel you are about to become. Think of that, Jimmy. Isn't it a wonderful thought? Just think how wonderful it will be to be an angel. Not everyone gets this chance, Jimmy. But you have been chosen.'
Like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly,' Nimmo repeated dumbly.
That's right. Don't let me down, Jimmy. You can do it. You can fly to God, Jimmy. You can fly like a bloody angel.'
Goldman walked away and rode the elevator down to the ground floor. It hardly mattered to him if Jimmy Nimmo threw himself off the Empire State Building, or not. Even if he did manage to come down from the eighty- sixth-floor observatory alive, the chances were that with so much acid affecting his brain, Nimmo would simply get hit by a truck, or walk in front of a train, or drown himself in the park. Frank Olsen's experience after seventy micrograms had lasted eight days. Well, Nimmo had swallowed eighty micrograms. Of course, anything was possible. Nimmo could be the luckiest guy in the world and end up in hospital with nothing more than a broken leg. But by then it would be too late for him to kill anyone on behalf of Johnny Rosselli, or Sam Giancana. Tom Jefferson was safe now. Nothing could interfere with that.
On 5th, Goldman jumped into a cab and told the driver to take him to 200 Riverside Drive. They drove west along 42nd Street. By the time they reached Times Square, Goldman had started humming Auld Lang Syne'.
Chapter 25
Hollis Fifteen
By the twentieth time Chub made love to Edith, he figured that he was getting the hang of it, at last. Not rushing it, but not taking too long about it either, which made her sore. Practice makes perfect, Edith said. The night before New Year's Eve was to be their last together - at least that was what Chub believed - so he told his parents he was going to stay over with an old friend from Choate, and not to expect him back until sometime on Saturday morning.
More or less as soon as Chub got to the apartment Edith gave him a blow job, the first one he had ever had. Just to make sure of his complete attention. Then she told him her great idea. She told him she owned a beautiful skiing lodge in Franconia, New Hampshire, which is about one hundred miles north of Boston. She and her friend Anne, in Boston - the one she had been visiting before she had met Chub on the express - were planning to drive up there on the night of Friday the sixth, and spend the whole weekend skiing. Wouldn't it be nice if Chub could come along? And not just Chub, but his roommate, Torbert, about whom she had heard so much, and whom she was quite sure her friend Anne would like, maybe as much as Edith liked Chub.
Chub wanted to come very much, but also pointed out that he and Torbert had ten days of examinations starting on 16 January. In reply to this, Edith pointed out that Chub's French was much improved, and that she could probably do the same for Torbert. Moreover, she suggested that the two boys could study in the mornings, and then ski with Edith and Anne in the afternoon. All work and no play.
This seemed such a good idea to Chub that he called Torbert immediately and told him about Edith's
